Guest Blog: Improve Company Culture By Listening to Your Employees

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post my colleague, Brooke Cade writes about how important communicating with your employees and listening to their insight is for improving company culture. One of my favorite ideas in the article is when employers enable employees to take ownership of their jobs and any issues that may present themselves.

As a business owner, “better” is always on the horizon, and you are responsible for finding the best vehicle to reach it. But what if you are ignoring your greatest resources for improvement: your frontline employees?

Feedback from customers and opinions of management can all be skewed due to a limited perspective. Frontline employees in the thick of everyday customer service may see or speak to 100+ clients a day, which gives them valuable insight into your business. Open up the line of communication with your employees to evaluate your current processes and reach your customer experience goals.

Foster the Voice of the Employee

Accepting employee suggestions and acting on them can’t be the end of it. This process is in constant motion with ebbs and flows of information. Some ideas for fostering the line of communication for your employees are:

• Focus on personal awareness and understanding. Continually ask questions that allow them to express their unique strengths and their personal goals within the company.

• Create training programs and professional development workshops.

• Educate your employees on exactly what your company stands for and how it differentiates from similar brands, products, or institutions.

• Don’t make the corporate brand and the personal brand compete. Help each employee find a way to make their individual traits contribute to the overall mission and goal of the company.

• Give credit where credit is due. Don’t be afraid to implement an idea presented by an employee (if you think it’s viable) and definitely give them credit.

Enable Employees to Take Ownership

Give employees the opportunity to take ownership of their jobs. Make sure they feel like they are a part of the success of your business, and are allowed opportunities to contribute in meaningful ways. Communication is vital to this: they must know that their voice is heard, and they must consistently hear that their work is appreciated.

Ways you can open these lines of communication are:

• Weekly staff meetings with agenda items suggested from employees.

• Email out an “Idea of the Month” proposed by employees to then open for feedback, constructive criticism, suggestions for implementation, proposed timelines etc.

• Designate engaged and dedicated employees as “Brand Ambassadors” to head the charge and collect frequent feedback.

• Create Employee Resource Groups to encourage cooperation and engagement from diverse employees.

Building on Employee Perspective

To truly benefit from the voice of your employees, you need to build upon it and integrate it into your broader business communication. Don’t take what your employees say without also considering the following viewpoints:

• Stakeholders – Identify your stakeholders and evaluate their perspective and experiences with what does and does not work within your company.

• Managers – Managers can see the process almost as an outsider and can recognize issues not visible to employees blinded by the cogs of their customer service duties.

• Team Leads – Where employees may be focused on the customer experience, team leads can see where strengths and weaknesses lay within employees and possess ideas on better training opportunities.

• Assistants – Observant and dedicated assistants can provide insight on time management.

• Neighboring Departments – Departments that may work closely with yours may have an external perspective on how your process affects their ability to be efficient.

• The Competition – We’ve all heard, “don’t reinvent the wheel.” Take note of how your competitors foster employee engagement, or look for successful business models outside of your industry. Many of these principles are universal

Having a continual process to engage all of your employees, stakeholders, and customers will increase productivity, improve morale, and “better” your company as a whole. This process allows you to identify why things are or are not working, and ensures you learn from past mistakes and foster continual growth.

Brooke Cade is a writer who’s committed to helping businesses and sales professionals build stronger connections with their customers. In her spare time, she enjoys learning more about InMoment.com—her CX platform of choice, reading books/articles on industry news, engaging on twitter, and exploring her local neighborhood coffee shop.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article: Five Ways Ace Hardware Proves David Can Beat Goliath

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